3 ms·

reCAPTCHA takes time and effort. It includes intentional delays and a random number of iterations (1-3). It also randomly fails and requires reloading the pag

reCAPTCHA takes time and effort. It includes intentional delays and a random number of iterations (1-3). It also randomly fails and requires reloading the page. Instead of 2 second page loads, you spend 15-20 seconds. This makes browsing over a VPN frustratingly slow. I'm convinced that reCAPTCHA is now just one of Google's tools to keep us all trackable and stop us from protecting our privacy. And CloudFlare is bringing it to half of the Internet. Bad bad bad. And shame.

alxlaz 7y ago
> This makes browsing over a VPN frustratingly slow. This is my pet peeve, too. I browse over a VPN all the time and these things pop up all the time and I hate them. I wouldn't have a problem with this mechanism if it worked, but it doesn't! It will randomly fail in various silly ways: new challenges are faded in so slowly there's no way you can wait for it, other times it will just keep on asking you to solve new challenges even though you're solving them correctly (I counted them once and it asked me to solve one 11 times before I gave up). And sometimes it will simply fail to load properly, or it will break websites in various ways. Lately, I've taken to solving the challenges badly in subtle ways, just because I can. If I'm gonna train Google's neural networks for free, I might as well train them badly...
- bogomipz 7y ago
  >'Lately, I've taken to solving the challenges badly in subtle ways, just because I can." Can you elaborate on this technique? Do you just purposefully solve them incorrectly a number of times before solving them correctly or something else?
  - alxlaz 7y ago
    If it asks me to identify traffic lights, for example, I also include a couple of squares that aren't traffic lights, like a tree on the side of the road. I'm more selective than a random algorithm, so that correctly gets me labeled as a meatbag, but I'm definitely not providing good answers, either. At this point, to be honest, I'm really not sure about the effectiveness of this mechanism anymore. It seems to me like a poorly-trained neural net with convincing human-like interaction (e.g. clicks spaced unequally) could produce exactly slightly-incorrect results that let me through. There's no way a smart 17 year-old wizzkid hasn't figured it out already and getting rich selling it to spammers in onion space.

alxlaz 7y ago

> This makes browsing over a VPN frustratingly slow. This is my pet peeve, too. I browse over a VPN all the time and these things pop up all the time and I hate them. I wouldn't have a problem with this mechanism if it worked, but it doesn't! It will randomly fail in various silly ways: new challenges are faded in so slowly there's no way you can wait for it, other times it will just keep on asking you to solve new challenges even though you're solving them correctly (I counted them once and it asked me to solve one 11 times before I gave up). And sometimes it will simply fail to load properly, or it will break websites in various ways. Lately, I've taken to solving the challenges badly in subtle ways, just because I can. If I'm gonna train Google's neural networks for free, I might as well train them badly...

bogomipz 7y ago
>'Lately, I've taken to solving the challenges badly in subtle ways, just because I can." Can you elaborate on this technique? Do you just purposefully solve them incorrectly a number of times before solving them correctly or something else?
- alxlaz 7y ago
  If it asks me to identify traffic lights, for example, I also include a couple of squares that aren't traffic lights, like a tree on the side of the road. I'm more selective than a random algorithm, so that correctly gets me labeled as a meatbag, but I'm definitely not providing good answers, either. At this point, to be honest, I'm really not sure about the effectiveness of this mechanism anymore. It seems to me like a poorly-trained neural net with convincing human-like interaction (e.g. clicks spaced unequally) could produce exactly slightly-incorrect results that let me through. There's no way a smart 17 year-old wizzkid hasn't figured it out already and getting rich selling it to spammers in onion space.